DOING TO, FOR, OR WITH EACH OTHER?
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu,
“peacemaking” at pepinsky.blogspot.com
July 27, 2015
In the introduction to my first
book (Crime and Conflict: A Study of Law
and Society, 1976; pdf copies on request, and under “articles” at www.critcrim.org) I write that that “study”
began with an encounter with Swedish psychologist Magnus Hedberg, as I was on
my way home with my parents from having spent my last year of secondary school
in Trondheim’s Cathedral School. Magnus
asked me what “democracy” meant to me as I went off to college seeking to
follow in Clarence Darrow’s legal footsteps (see Attorney for the Damned). I
borrowed from Lincoln’s Gettysburg address to become an officer of court in a
government of the people, by the people, and for the people, to make law work
for the people. Magnus had me elaborate
on what I meant by my vision of being a lawyer for the people, then asked: What
about doing things WITH people? I
responded that I saw no difference between doing things for and with
people. He responded: You’ll have no
problem returning to America. After my
year of trying hard to fit in with Norwegians, I felt challenged to
understanding what difference the attitude of doing WITH people makes, for
others and my sense of safety, trust, and value with others—particularly in
cases at all intra-/interpersonal levels that are driven by fear and distrust,
a way of defining and responding to “violence” which I have come to call “peacemaking.”
Leslie T. Wilkins had by then taught
me to see that the overwhelming problem of the boundaries of criminological
knowledge and practice was “treating the problem as the problem of the
criminal.” The criminological and mental
health divide between punishment and treatment (so-called “liberal criminology”
and “treatment options” in broader contexts, as for “at-risk” youth beginning
in the latter 19th century with institution of reformatories and “reform
schools”) continue, where providing services “for” assessed as “at risk” or
legally dangerous to themselves and others is held out as a way to “end mass
incarceration” in my country. If you’re
opposed to punishing offenders, treatment alternatives or “intervention” is
where alternatives lie. From measuring
crime by prison counts and convictions to law enforcement data, waves of
political preference for punishment and confinement, and for rehabilitation and
treatment of offenders and the mentally ill, continue to succeed one another,
most recently in using “broken windows” data to show how police reduce crime by
making petty public order arrests.
At the same time, including
among those charged with enforcing the law and treating (potential) offenders
and the mentally ill, indeed in all our relations, I find ways we do things WITH
people in practice—transforming the authority to do things to or for people
into a mutually controlled and guided process of building common ground,
including police officers, judges, probation, parole and prison officers, with
those they encounter. In formal legal
terms, from Chinese dynastic law through “conferencing,” it is “mediation” or “conflict”
or “dispute resolution” in contrast to adjudication and arbitration (though
often one-sided in practice). I thank my
Scandinavian friends and teachers, who have brought with-ness to my conscious
attention. I have come to know it also
as feminist praxis, as circle processes, as empathic relations physically, and
as compassion in spirit. Peacemaking
happens in moments where participation and creation of what to do next is
balanced, where in substantive outcomes and agreements to terms include terms
created in a process of mutual validation and accommodation, where participants
create their own social contracts rather than by prescription or order, by
sharing power rather than by exercises of power over others, whether it is done
to or for them. Fifty-four years later, I
owe Magnus Hedberg credit for guiding me to the fundamental realization that
peacemaking lies in coming to terms with rather than to or for others,
regardless of the formal structures in which we relate. Love and peace, hal
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